ALBUM REVIEW: Iconoclast – Herod
Over the years, Swiss groove metallers HEROD have been amassing quite the CV. Lurking in the shadows of the genre’s bigger names – your LAMB OF GODs and your GOJIRAs, for example – they’ve released a pair of top-tier releases that should have fans paying attention and contemporaries sleeping with one eye open. Now they return with Iconoclast and prove that their peers should really start clutching their crowns tightly, lest they be wrenched from their hands with brutal force.
Right away, the quartet of Pierre Carroz (guitar, bass, programming), Bertrand Pot (guitar), Michael Pilat (guitar & vocals) and Fabien Vodoz (drums) sounds to be at their earth-shattering best. Album opener The Icon is immediately grotesque in its murky and abrasive composition, but as the guitars, rhythm section and vocals are maddeningly layered beyond comprehension and the tension builds, it’s all stripped away for an eruption of anguish and fury.
Like the aftermath of Mount Vesuvius’ infamous eruption that buried Pompeii then, the rest of Iconoclast is the debris raining from the sky and the pyroclastic flows coming to smother all you’ve ever known and loved in this life. The Edifice features Matt McGachy of tech death legends CRYPTOPSY to add yet more malice to the maelstrom, while The Obsolete opts for Flying Whales-esque riffage that hypnotises and transfixes before luring you into one of the album’s most menacing breakdowns.
Yet, for all the brutality on Iconoclast, there is ample beauty to be admired. HEROD have found a way to weave in more clean vocals without losing their powerful edge and the atmospherics are more awe inspiring than we’ve heard from them prior. All of this comes to a head on The Ode To, which stands out not only as one of the best songs on Iconoclast, but as one of the best songs of the year to date. Enlisting the help of LE MYSTERÈS DES VOIX BULGARES, HEROD fuse the choir’s enchanting high-pitched polyphonic vocalisations with their own volcanic sonics to create something that is somehow alien and familiar, comforting and haunting all at once. It is an arrangement that will keep you hooked throughout and calls to mind everything from HANS ZIMMER’s score for Dune to the reception one might receive at the gates of hell.
Once again though, it’s the tone that HEROD are able to create that is the star of the show, and that star is going through a rapid and violent cosmic death that will be seen, felt and heard through the universe. From guitars that sound like chainsaws submerged in a swamp to drums that explode on contact, theirs is a sound that is outstandingly violent and – particularly here on Iconoclast – superbly grimy. Whether it underpins a full-bodied assault like on The Becoming, or accompanies Pilat’s clean harmonies on The Prophecy, it is impossible not to scrunch your face up and snap your neck in approval.
Iconoclast is the sound of a band that is ready to take themselves to the next level. HEROD won’t suddenly be doing arena tours or headlining festivals off the back of this, but that’s not what they’re here for. They’re here to raise the bar for what groove metal’s bigger names should be doing musically. They’re here to show that that seat at the head of the table shan’t be taken for granted.
Rating: 9/10
Iconoclast is set for release on May 5th via Pelagic Records.
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